The time I share with you how I fell for a deluded idea of beauty and learned to let go of it.

Hiya friends? How is it going there? I'm going to talk about a topic near and dear to my heart. It's about beauty. Let's do it!

In 2015, while active on Instagram for the first time, I felt my skin wasn't that great and needed improvement. What made me think this way? Well in a nutshell, after browsing countless of flawless photos of females on Instagram, I felt out of place in terms of my skin state. You could say I was naive too as I hadn't a clue that these pictures were enhanced by makeup and then digitally. I believed the 'reality' of these photos and started to try and 'fix' my skin, specifically, the one on my face.

At this time, I didn't have acne. My skin had old acne scares, pores that seemed larger than life to my eyes then and small moles ( I still do have them and appreciate them now ). In other words, my skin was doing alright and there I was feeling insecure, going out of my way attempting to 'fix' it. I wouldn't bore you with the horrible details but the gist was: The 'fixing' of my skin turned against its own natural intelligence. Acne started to make my initially clear cheek skin their home. I restarted my skincare again with something else, that was also another nightmare for my skin.

Ruthlessly, my skin acne continued and flared up even more, I had to ask for help somewhere and that I did and was glad. My brother's girlfriend taught me the basics and advised me to stay with the basics, using the gentlest of products and guess what? My skin became calmer and back to the state before I went crazy with it after almost a year. Now, what was that actually about?

What idea of beauty was I trying to achieve? Whose idea of beauty was it? Why must I reach this ideal? Questions keep my brains busy and things settled into this one statement: Leave my face to be whatever it is being. Stop fussing about it!


At present, I am happy to report that I use water to wash my face and it's looking great! Coupled with a healthy balanced nutrition and a spirit too happy to let go of the unnecessary, I had been initiated by Life to keep it real with myself.

I have no care for putting on foundation. No care for 'perfecting' the skin on my face using foundation and its concealer family members. When I get my photos uploaded here or Instagram, I made sure the dots, blemishes, active acne, wrinkle/happy lines and my sometimes, wonky unfilled brows to show themselves up.

I don't understand why on the Internet, everything has to be stripped clean and clear off their natural aliveness that contains every other bit we deem 'unfit' for the screen. I use filters yes, but these are to give the photos a mood in terms of coloring but I keep my face on it real.

I don't have a care to make it 'thin' digitally. I don't understand why we do this to ourselves and then feel bad and insecure that we don't look like that in real life. Foundation to me one thing that I find absolutely unnecessary. Do guys use foundation to perfect their skin? Most guys don't. They sport their own skin, warts and all.

To be honest, I love the play of colors on my face, like an eye-shadow, blush or lipstick or balm but the skin of face is left naturally itself. I use sunscreen and some natural oils that I found healthy for my skin. I refuse to slather foundation to make it into a 'blank canvas' and then go back in with the contouring, highlighting, baking, etc. This old girl right here has no precious time to waste on that. That said, I do enjoy watching minimalist makeup tutorials on YouTube but have no such care to have a made-up face to be myself in reality.

What I do care for the most is the skincare bit which includes moisturizing, protecting the skin from the sun, under-eye moisturizing and some type of anti-aging skin care approach for my happy lines but that's about it. The face that I look at in the mirror, when I'm outside, at my work-desk or with my cats is all the same.

I feel freely myself when I approach beauty in this manner as it is not contrasted with an image of beauty that is stripped to meet the unrealistic standards of the Internet. I appreciate Instagram accounts that reveal the reality of the humans that create them and appreciate looking at real people bold enough to be themselves, warts and all.

Wow, I wrote a lot. Hahah.

Sorry for the rant as I just had to pour it out. I hope you girls, women and ladies enjoy this entry as it's something that I know for sure we do think about and have experienced ourselves. Back in 2015, which was only about four years back, I was 33 and far from being an impressionable teen, I still fell for Intagram's unrealistic beauty standards.

I can only imagine how very young girls get into body-image challenges when they live and breathe the distorted beauty of the Internet. I hope we all, no matter the age, question the idea of beauty that parades in our own head so we can let go of unrealistic expectations and methods to reaching it and find it in our hearts the strength to embrace our own unique authenticity.

Have you ever felt into the trap of wanting to look flawless IRL or on a social media and then ended up wrecking your skin and questioning the way you perceive beauty for yourself? Please share below so we can all learn, change our minds and keep it real! As always, thank you for spending your time here, I really appreciate it!

To end this entry, here's a quote by Alan Watts to ponder:

"We seldom realize, for example, that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society."

Photo credit / Thiago Matos